Summer Son (8 page)

“I’m in,” I said lightly when she was done describing the project. “Did you really think I wouldn’t take it?”

“It’s a lot of work,” she warned me. “I don’t know what your workload is like right now, but you’re going to need to set a lot of time aside for this one.”

“I can do that. Seriously, Meg. I’m wrapping up a few things now. I’ll have more time to spend on it as of the end of this week.”

“Excellent. I’ll e-mail you all the details and set up that meeting.”

I nodded.

“So tell me about Zane,” she said again. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“We are becoming very good friends.”

“Ellis,” she said dramatically. “You’re killing me here.”

“I like him a lot. We’ll see what happens.”

“Okay.”

I was surprised she dropped it that quickly, then wondered what else she had up her sleeve. It wasn’t like Meg to give up on any process of data extraction. Especially when her target was me. We’d been friends for a long time, and even though it was Oliver who introduced us, we clicked much better than she did with Ollie. That often meant she knew when I was trying to keep something from her. I’d never had a sister. Meg was like my surrogate.

We gave Lupe a cheery wave good-bye, got a scowl in return, and laughed all the way out the door. Meg walked part of the way back to my mom’s with me, then hopped on the subway to get back to her office. It was only a few blocks away, but apparently her shoes were killing her feet.

When I got my son back he was crying. I should have taken it for the omen it was.

W
ITH
MY
eyes closed, I rocked back and forth from one foot to the other and wondered if it was actually possible to sleep standing up. If it was, I was close to getting there.

Then my phone buzzed and broke me out of my sleepy reverie.

I looked down at it where it was lit up on the coffee table. It was Zane, so I decided to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Hi. I’m outside your apartment, and the lights are still on.”

“Mm. I think Harrison’s sick. He won’t sleep.”

“Do you want me to come up?”

“If you like. Hang on. Why are you outside my apartment at… one in the morning?”

“I’ve come from campus.”

I paused for a long moment. “No, that doesn’t make sense.”

“I was working on one of my projects. I do my best work at night.”

“Oh. I’ll buzz you up.”

I still wasn’t sure I understood, not really. I was running on about four hours sleep out of the past forty-eight. It took a long time for information to filter through.

My suspicions were confirmed when I opened the front door to Zane’s light knock and decided he was a vision, an angel—no one could look that good backlit with white fluorescent lights.

“You look like shit,” he said, stepping inside and wrapping his warm palm around my cheek.

“Mm.”

He rose up onto his toes and pressed a soft kiss to my mouth, carefully fitting his body around Harrison, who was
not
sleeping on my shoulder.

“He’s sick?” Zane asked after he’d pulled away. His hand lingered on my face for a moment before drifting down to rub gently at Harrison’s back.

“I think so. I’ll take him to a doctor in the morning, but right now I’m just trying to get through the night. I don’t normally give him any medication unless he needs it.”

“Does he need it?”

“No,” I said. “He doesn’t have a fever or anything. He’s just snuffly and won’t sleep, and he’s crying a lot. He won’t lay down on his own, and if I sit down, he starts screaming.”

I was reluctant—to say the least—to hand over my baby, but he’d been on my shoulder for the past five hours, and if nothing else, I needed to pee.

Zane carefully took Harrison, who immediately started to wail, and started the bounce-and-shush method that hadn’t been working for me for most of the day.

“Go on,” he said to me. “I’ll watch him for a bit.”

“Are you sure? You really don’t have to.”

“You look dead on your feet, Ellis,” he said, rubbing soothing circles over Harrison’s back. “Go catch a couple hours. I’ll keep hold of him.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Feeling like a zombie, I walked through to the bathroom, splashed some water on my face, then stripped down to my underwear. I could vaguely hear Zane singing softly from the living room, but my brain didn’t want to tune in to that. I crawled into bed, threw the blankets over my back, and fell asleep on an exhale.

S
OMETIME
LATER
,
there was no way of knowing how long, the bed shifted and Zane crawled in beside me.

“Hmm?”

“He’s asleep,” Zane whispered. “Has been for about thirty minutes, so I put him back in the crib.”

“Monitor….”

“It’s on your nightstand. Go back to sleep, baby. I’ll wake up if he does.”

I pulled him back so I could curl around his spine in a protective embrace, then followed his advice and slept.

By morning I was feeling a little more alive and like the worst father in existence. Zane wasn’t in bed with me, so I could add “terrible boyfriend” to the list of things to feel like shit about. I rolled out of bed and rubbed my hands over my face, the three days’ growth of beard itching my chin. Then I pulled on pajama pants and went about searching for my boys.

Zane was in the kitchen, feeding mashed banana mixed with what looked like yogurt to my son, who was sitting in his high chair.

“Good morning.”

“Morning,” I said, and then I tried the word again once I’d cleared the fuzz from my throat.

“He seems a lot better,” Zane said, aiming another spoonful of banana at Harrison’s face. He got at least half of it in his mouth, and I was silently impressed.

“Yeah?”

“Mhmm. There’s coffee in the pot.”

I blinked, and it slammed right into my chest: I was in love. Not in the same way I’d told Naema the first time I’d met Zane, but real love. My heart stuttered, skipped a beat, then resumed a slightly quicker tempo.

“Ellis? Coffee?”

“Hm? Oh. Yeah. You want some?”

“Please.”

I made a mug for myself and topped up his, then stood just behind Zane’s shoulder. Harrison was wearing a “Look, Daddy, I’m being good” expression that I didn’t trust in the slightest. I kissed Zane’s hair.

“Thank you for last night,” I murmured. “And this morning.”

“It’s nothing.”

“No,” I corrected him. “It’s everything.”

He looked up at me over his shoulder and smiled. The spoon full of Harrison’s breakfast was suspended in midair, and my baby leaned forward, mouth open, trying to encourage it into his mouth. Clearly annoyed that Zane had interrupted any attempts at feeding him, he let out an indignant shriek.

“Sorry, little dude,” Zane said, directing the spoon back.

“He’s eating.”

“Yes.”

“What is he eating?”

“Mashed banana, a tiny little bit of applesauce, Greek yogurt, and some grated nutmeg.”

“Can he eat grated nutmeg?”

“Mhmm. It’s good. You wanna try some?”

I stuck my pinkie finger in the dish and swiped up a bit of the banana yogurt. I could barely taste the spice. It was just enough to stop it being bland.

“Not bad,” I said.

“If I make it for myself I put granola in it.”

“He’s definitely too young for granola.”

“I know, Ellis,” Zane said gently. “That’s why I didn’t put any in.”

“Oh.”

“I owe you a lot, it seems,” I said, abandoning my coffee and leaning down to press slack-mouthed kisses to his neck. Zane arched into the sensation.

“All done,” he said, holding the empty bowl up for Harrison’s inspection.

My son clapped. I fell in love again.

I
DECIDED
to take Harrison to the doctor anyway, just to get him checked out, even though I was pretty sure whatever it was had passed. I knew that nights like the one I’d had were the reason why two parents were usually involved in the raising of a child. I couldn’t be sure, of course, but my stress and exhaustion were probably affecting Harrison’s ability to calm down and sleep.

We dropped Zane off at his apartment on the way to the clinic, even though it wasn’t on the way at all. He promised to come back as soon as he could, for dinner, maybe, after he’d slept the afternoon away.

The good old parental guilt was kicking in pretty hard, mixing with the bone-deep gratefulness for what Zane had done for us both. He was an extraordinary man; with every day that passed I became a little more sure of that.

There wasn’t much of a wait at the clinic, and I got in to see Azriel too. He had only been a fully qualified doctor for a year or so. His degree in medicine had taken a lot longer to complete than any of the rest of the group’s artistic endeavors. He’d joined us by way of Lupe, his older sister of four and a half minutes, lest anyone forget her dominance. Sometimes it seemed everyone was connected by either family or relationship—some relationships more fleeting than others. Generally, if we weren’t related, we’d slept with at least one other person in our social circle. Sometimes the incestuous vibes were weird. I was lucky—being either involved with or married to Oliver had prevented me from dipping my toe into that particular incestuous pool.

I’d always gotten along with Az; he was so chill it was hard not to. For his shift at the clinic he’d decided to wear jeans with a rip in the knee, his dreads tied back with a piece of dirty string, and a T-shirt with a picture of an upside-down lizard, bearing the slogan “Coma Chameleon.”

He greeted me with a hug and a leer. “So, you’re fucking Zane? Congrats, dude. I heard he’s a hard guy to pin down.”

“So, my son’s sick,” I said, trying to bring him down to my level of gravity.

“Mhmm,” Az hummed. Harrison was in the process of trying to rip my hair out, so I didn’t really blame Az for not taking me seriously. “Let’s have a look at him, then. What’s wrong?”

“I couldn’t get him to sleep last night,” I said. “He was screaming and fussy and hot but not feverish.”

Az got me to sit down on the bed with Harrison on my lap as he quickly went through his vitals.

“Is he eating okay?”

“He is now.”

“Cool. Lift his shirt up for me?”

I’d always wondered if doctors carried stethoscopes just for show. Nothing I’d seen in my life so far had dissuaded me from that opinion. Harrison was clearly not pleased about having the metal pressed to his chest and expressed his displeasure by kicking me in the knee. Repeatedly.

“He seems fine,” Az said. “Does he have any allergies?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Hay fever?”

I paused for a moment. “Oh, fuck.”

“Yeah. If you or his biological mother get it, he’s more likely to.”

“I used to, when I was a kid.”

“There you go. There’s a chance he’ll grow out of it. Or it might not be that at all. I can give you a prescription in case it flares up again?”

“That would be great.”

Azriel sat back at his computer to tap out the scrip, and I calmed Harrison down from his terrifying ordeal with Rory the dinosaur, who had come along for moral support.

“Tell me to fuck off if you want….”

“Fuck off.”

“Nice,” Az said. “But the fine state of New York will give you a free STD test for being a gay man with an active sex life. If you want one. Since you’ve got a new sexual partner and all….”

“How do you know Zane and I are having sex?”

“Dude, you’re definitely getting some. Something—or someone—has pulled the stick out of your ass. Or put one back up there. Am I wrong?”

I considered not responding, although that was more likely to fuel the flames than kill them. And there was the promise to Zane that we’d both get checked to confirm we were clean.

“Yeah, all right,” I said with a sigh. “But it’s fine. I’m happy to pay for it.”

“Cool. I’ll just take some blood. You wanna put the kid somewhere else for five minutes? I can get someone to come in and watch him if you like.”

“He’ll be fine on the floor,” I said, setting Harrison down and giving him free rein over my backpack, with all its fun zips to play with.

Az snapped on a pair of latex gloves and fussed with all the stuff he needed to take blood. I was used to the process, having donated a few times before. It didn’t affect me too badly, and I was happy to sit back and watch Harrison (rather than the needle) while Az took a few vials.

“Great. All done. They won’t send the results to me. They’ll text you if it’s all clear or call you back in if we need to discuss anything. Don’t panic if they call you—it could mean there was a problem at the lab, or the sample wasn’t good, or whatever. It doesn’t mean you’ve got something.”

“Okay,” I said. “I did have a test when we were planning for Harrison, and I got the all clear.”

“And how many sexual partners have you had since then? Don’t give me that look, Ellis. I’m asking as your doctor.”

“Two,” I said darkly. “Oliver and Zane.”

“I fucking knew it,” he said with a little fist pump. I glared at him.

“Joking,” he insisted, holding up his hands. “You should be fine. We’ll be in touch.”

“Thanks.”

I tucked the prescription into my pocket and swept Harrison up, shouldered my backpack, and shook Azriel’s hand.

“Good to see you, man.”

“You too. Take care.” The fact that he was a doctor stopped his words from being mindless platitude and turned them into a request.

I had a couple of errands to run while I was out, so when we got back home I set Harrison down to play and pulled out the file that contained all the information about his mother.

Holly had been everything we were looking for, and she’d come along at just the right time. She was a mother of two of her own children and had been a surrogate once before, so she was familiar with the process.

I’d clicked with her immediately, which was such a relief, since she was so perfect on paper. As part of the surrogacy process she’d put together a file with all her medical history, and I settled on the sofa with it on my lap, ready to flick through.